Alright, i know theres a few of you on here who love doing math, so ive got one. I was in an argument with someone about the 'monkeys typing Hamlet' thing. He was saying it would never happen (which is completely illogical), and i said it would, although i know it would take a ridiculous amount of time.


So saying that Hamlet is 150,000 characters long, and there is 30 possible keys (since aside from the 26 letters theyd really only need about 4 other keys) and a monkey can type 525,600 characters a year (just to shoot low and average at 1/min), how many years would it take?


I did it but im pretty sure I did it wrong.

 

does the mokey just hit random keys? Are you trying to figure out how long it would take to put 150,000 characters in a certain order just by chance... like really big lottery?

 

Yup, every key being a 1/30 chance. Itd get too complicated if you had to try and predict some kind of recurring pattern.

 

Now I dont know if Im right, however I believe that the rate at which he types at is irrelevant unless you delete every incorrect stroke? Because if you do not the probability alone would be (1/30)^150,000. Which is a ridiculous number.

If you do delete the incorrect stroke you can determine a minimum and maximum time. The minumum would simply be 150,000/525,600. The maximum would be (30*150,000)/525,600.

 

Yes, the min would be less than a quarter of a year, although thats not what im looking for. And there cant really be a maximum since theoretically it could go on ALMOST to infinity. Im looking for a theoretical average, and i think i got the same thing as you did (cant remember, i did i it yesterday while i was watching the hockey game), but for some reason it doesnt seem right...

 

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